Nokia Maps APIs will be open to 3rd party Windows Phone developers

It's been confirmed that Nokia Maps will be used on all Windows Phone devices down the road, including ones from Samsung or LG. According to Nokia's Marko Lumivuori, however, also the “current Ovi Maps API will be supported in the oncoming devices” with the Windows Phone Mango update.

On one hand, this is great news for third party developers, who can use the APIs to port their Symbian apps to Nokia Windows Phones, if so inclined. On the other, it's another confirmation that other phone makers like HTC, Samsung, LG, Acer, ZTE and Fujitsu can also use Nokia Maps, which will seemingly become an integral part of the Windows Phone platform, providing free offline voice-guided navigation in more than 90 countries worldwide, definitely a selling point before the competition.

The first batch of Nokia Windows Phones, like the Nokia Sea Ray that leaked last week, is unlikely to see Nokia Maps integrated in Mango, as it became clear not long ago, since merging it as a backend for the current Bing Maps solution will take some more time, but hopefully they'll get it with an update upon full integration. It will be interesting to know if the resulting service will still be called Bing Maps, and very telling about the role Nokia plays in the partnership.